Aug. 3, 2003: In Minneapolis, the Episcopal Church’s laity and clergy move the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson, 56, of Weare, a step closer to becoming New Hampshire’s bishop, giving him more votes than expected in a church deeply torn over his homosexuality. He needs 112 votes from the clergy and laity. He gets 128.
Aug. 3, 2002: Nan Hagen has had a lifelong love affair with downtowns, the Monitor reports. As the first coordinator of Main Street Concord, Inc., she’ll bring that love – and 11 years of experience rehabbing community business districts – into Concord’s downtown.
August 3, 1871: Brothers George and Charles Page organize the Page Belting Co. after buying a large tannery on Commercial Street near Horse Shoe Pond in Concord. Their father Moses, an innovator in the leather industry, has operated tanneries in Franklin, Chichester and Manchester. The sons will display their belting at the 1876 Centennial exposition in Philadelphia and the 1893 Columbian exposition in Chicago.
Aug. 3, 1923: Fire consumes the Profile House in Franconia Notch, then the largest hotel in New England. Within a four-hour period, the hotel and 25 buildings around it are destroyed.
Aug. 4, 1926: It is announced in Concord that Allen Hollis, a local lawyer and civic leader known as “The Kingfish,” will donate 11.9 acres on South Fruit Street and $5,000 toward a football field and other athletic facilities. The land will become Memorial Field.
Aug. 4, 1965: Concord begins celebrating its bicentennial with neighborhood fairs, a Bicentennial Queen pageant, badminton, water polo and tugs of war.
Aug. 5, 1855: On a visit home in Chester, N.H., Benjamin Brown French worries that the nation is headed toward civil war because of the Southern movement to add new slave territory. “To this movement I am sorry to see a Northern President lending his aid!” he writes in his diary. “How terribly Franklin Pierce has disappointed all his friends!”
Aug. 5, 1861: New Hampshire’s First Regiment, its three months’ enlistment up, returns to Concord without having fought a battle. Gov. Nathaniel Berry, the Governor’s Horse Guard and a large crowd of citizens greet the regiment and accompany it to the State House. There, the soldiers stack arms. Many will volunteer for service in the three-year regiments now forming.
Aug. 6, 2003: A day after approving the election of the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson, of Weare, as the country’s first openly gay bishop, Episcopal Church leaders pass a watered-down resolution giving dioceses the option of blessing same-sex unions.
Aug. 6, 1728: A grant creates the Plantation of Suncook (an Indian term meaning “place of the goose” or “rocky place”). Massachusetts grants the land to the 47 soldiers and survivors of an Indian-hunting expedition to the north known as Lovewell’s War. Francis Doyen of Penacook, one of Lovewell’s soldiers, is believed to have been the first white settler.
August 6, 1812: At a convention in Brentwood, Federalist Daniel Webster presents a draft of a document he has written opposing the declaration of war that led to the War of 1812. The document establishes Webster’s belief in free trade and will lead to his nomination (and election) to Congress on the “Peace Ticket.”
Aug. 6, 1854: When President Franklin Pierce declines a besotted South Carolinian’s invitation to have a drink with him, the man berates the president and throws a hard-boiled egg at him. Pierce has the man arrested.
Aug. 7, 1856: Benjamin Chandler, age 75, becomes lost while hiking Mount Washington. Rescuers are unsuccessful, and his body will not be found until the following year. Years later, Chandler Ridge, Chandler Brook and the Chandler Brook Trail will be named in his memory.
Aug. 8, 1861: After eight years and several failed efforts, the Mt. Washington Summit Co. completes the road up Mt. Washington. The road covers eight miles while rising 4,700 feet. The mountain’s peak is 6,288 feet above sea level.
Aug. 8, 1974: As news of the impending resignation of President Nixon sweeps the nation, the Monitor interviews people in the streets of Concord. “I feel a tremendous sense of renewal for the American system,” St. Paul’s School English teacher Richard Lederer tells a reporter. The president announces his resignation in a televised speech, and Vice President Gerald Ford assumes the presidency.
Aug. 8, 1861: The Democratic Standard, a Concord newspaper with Southern sympathies, refers to the Union Army as “Old Abe’s Mob.” When angry returned soldiers from the First New Hampshire Volunteers gather outside the Standard office, the paper’s frightened proprietors stand in the windows, pistols in hand. The owners fire three shots in the melee that follows, but no one is injured. The mob burns some of the Standard’s property and dumps its type cases in the street.
